


Salt in the Wound

by kokichiouma



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Phantom Thief/Detective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23098363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokichiouma/pseuds/kokichiouma
Summary: Ouma and Saihara unexpectedly cross paths again after a heist-gone-wrong. The wounds are still fresh, in more ways than one.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 221
Collections: SaiOu Winter Exchange 2019





	Salt in the Wound

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece for the Saiou Winter Exchange on twitter! My giftee was Phantomorrow—I really hope you like it, Trace! They requested a Phantom Thief/Detective AU, as well as hurt/comfort, so I tried to add a few elements of both! I've been wanting to write a saiou Phantom Thief AU for ages now and it's one of my favorite AUs too, so I loved having the opportunity to write for it!
> 
> Happy Saiou Day everyone!

When he opens his eyes, Ouma Kokichi is pretty sure he must be dead. After all, the only thing he sees above him is a dull and dingy grey, nothing like the fresh air of the sky outside or the creaky wooden ceiling of his room back home.

However… his eyes are admittedly a little blurry. He blinks a few more times, forcing his eyes to focus, and gradually realizes that he can make out a few patches of peeling wallpaper. After another few seconds, his sense of smell also confirms that the darker flecks he can see here and there must be mold.

It’s enough to make him wrinkle his nose and furrow his brow, but he doesn’t rule out the possibility of being dead just yet. If life after death was nothing more than a boring, cheap motel room, that would actually be the _perfect_ punishment for someone like him.

Not to mention—from what little he remembers before he lost consciousness, he was definitely on death’s door.

Dead or not, he’s still nosy enough to want to know more about where he is, though, so he lets his eyes slowly scan the room, trying to glean enough information to slowly piece together his disjointed memories…

…and the silhouette he sees, sitting on a chair right in front of the one and only door in the room, is enough to shock him into bolting upright in bed.

This turns out to be a critical mistake—every nerve in his body screams in protest as he grips the dirty sheets with all the strength he can muster. His knuckles pale to a bone-white as he makes a noise halfway between a mangled scream and a hiss. For just a moment, his vision threatens to black out entirely.

“Oh, good. You’re awake,” says the voice from the direction of the chair, as calmly as if they were about to continue some discussion they had just left off. “You shouldn’t move too suddenly—I’m er, not really sure how well those bandages are going to hold up.”

Ordinarily, he’d be able to retort immediately with some snippy comeback or other (it was, after all, a little too late to tell him not to move _after_ he’d already done it), but as things are now, Ouma needs a moment or two to steady himself. He clenches his teeth and blinks away the tears that rose to his eyes when that pain seared across his side. The pain isn’t the only thing throwing him off-balance, though—there’s also the confusion.

Despite the dull, throbbing ache that's clouding his thoughts, he struggles frantically to think of any reason why Detective Saihara Shuuichi might have saved his life. No answers come to mind. Not unless he really _is_ dead, anyway.

In a weird way, that’s the theory that makes the most sense to him in his current state. Maybe this was all just a daydream being shown to him by those last, firing synapses before brain death while he bled out. His brain’s way of giving him one last gentle lie before he finally kicked the bucket. That would actually answer all his questions nice and neatly, with a little bow on top.

Because if that’s not the answer… if there was some other reason for this little chance meeting, and he’s actually still alive somehow in this musty, dim motel room, then he’s not really sure he wants to know.

Whatever the case might be, Ouma finally manages to plaster a smile on his face after a minute or so has passed. Not his brightest or most convincing smile, to be sure, but at least it’s a fraction of his old façade. “Saihara-chan,” he says, “how nice to see you again. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Silence follows. The detective meets his eye—and, much to Ouma’s disappointment, looks away first.

“Please, no antics this time. You already know why I’m here.”

“Oh, do I?” Naturally, he decides to be as contrary as possible. “Right, it must be because you missed me already. I’m very lovable that way. Or, _maybe_ you wanted to come in here and finish me off yourself, on account of how I humiliated you in front of all your friends and coworkers?” Realizing that that only raises another question, he blinks. “Wait, how did you know I was here anyway?”

Saihara-chan’s hands clench atop his knees for only a moment, but that moment is long enough for Ouma to know he struck a nerve. Good. Then the detective sighs, reluctantly looking his way again. “You left a trail of blood from the alley, all the way here. Anyone could spot it a mile away. It really wasn’t that hard to piece it together, when I realized that this motel was a perfect fit for somewhere the Phantom Th—where you might stay to keep a low profile.”

“That doesn’t really explain why you wouldn’t just let me bleed out,” he says, his mouth curling from a smile into something more like a sneer. The detective did, after all, have every reason to want him dead after the little stunt he’d pulled. “Hmm, maybe you just bandaged me up so you could have your way with me first…?”

“I think you know I wouldn’t do something like that.” For the first time since he woke up, there’s a glimpse of something almost like anger on Saihara-chan’s face.

Anger, hurt, betrayal. Those were the emotions he’d been expecting to see since the start, anyway. Tricking someone, lying to them about your identity, and then making off with a priceless painting right under their nose wasn’t exactly a great way to make friends—Saihara Shuuichi owed him no favors or kindness. So it’s almost a relief to see him finally show a flicker of what he must really be feeling towards him.

Ouma waits apprehensively, wondering if he perhaps ran his mouth too much, pushed too hard. But the detective just takes a deep breath, then sighs.

“Just tell me what happened to the painting. After that, I can take you to a hospital, and then—”

“—and then after that, I’ll be locked up for the rest of my life? Yeah, no thanks.” He scoffs. “Also, I don’t _know_ what happened to it, on account of almost being murdered.”

Saihara-chan looks just a little taken aback. “You mean… you let someone else take it?”

“’Let them’ ? That’s a nasty way to put it. I didn’t do this to myself, you know.” He gestures down at the bloody bandages on his side, trying not to wince from even that small movement. “Whoever stabbed me must’ve been after it from the start, because they came up from behind me and I didn’t catch a glimpse.”

The detective looks him over with a mixture of shock and open disappointment, apparently unsure of how to react. At last, tentatively, he says, “…So, someone… stole it from you? You, the Phantom Thief?”

The idea of having been outsmarted (even by a faceless, nameless opponent) rubs him the wrong way, but Ouma might’ve been able to keep his cool despite that.

What he _can’t_ abide by, though, is someone else rubbing salt in his haphazardly-bandaged wounds—so to speak. “Hey, I don’t go around shanking the people I steal from, in case that slipped your notice, _Mister Detective_. I have fun with my marks—I don’t try to murder them.”

The detective winces, and Ouma takes some pleasure in the knowledge that he struck yet another nerve. That is, until Saihara-chan apologizes to him.

“…You’re right, sorry. I-I was a little surprised, but that was a low blow. I shouldn’t have said that.”

The sincerity of those words hurts his conscience worse than the pain from the wound in his side, although he’d never admit it. Ouma looks elsewhere for anything that might catch his attention, his eyes settling on the mold stains from earlier.

“I’d like your help tracking down that painting, if you’d be up to it. Of course, we’d get your wound looked at first…”

He doesn’t respond or look away, and after a few more seconds of silence he can hear the detective sigh.

“…I spotted some of your accomplices when you fled the scene, you know.”

_That_ actually does catch his attention. Ouma stiffens involuntarily, then tries not to hiss through his teeth when the sudden motion sends a fresh wave of pain stabbing at his wound.

Saihara-chan seems to notice though, because there’s a pause—maybe he was debating with himself over whether he should feel concerned or not for the guy who’d made him look like an idiot.

When he speaks again, there’s a strained, tentative edge to his voice. “I haven’t told anyone. I-I wouldn’t. You’re the only one who’s looking at any kind of sentence right now, and if you agree to help me, I could probably get even that reduced… So, please.”

There’s no way he’s telling the truth, of course. No way. Most likely, the moment he actually finds that painting is the moment they’ll slap a pair of handcuffs on him and cart him away to rot in prison.

That’s the most likely scenario. If they’re going to lock him up anyway, then he should just make everyone’s lives a little harder and turn him down. He _should_ say no, but…

But for some reason, he hesitates. Maybe it’s the note of concern in Saihara-chan’s voice, or the fact that the bandages wrapped clumsily around his wounds were so obviously tied with good intentions. Or maybe it’s just that the mold in this room is finally getting to him, making his head go funny.

Whatever the case may be, Ouma curses himself for letting that painting slip through his fingers. If he’d just been a little more vigilant of his surroundings (a little less preoccupied with that last glimpse he’d had of Saihara-chan, and the look in his eyes when he finally put all the pieces together), then he’d be at home right now, celebrating with everyone else, painting the town red. Instead of here, trapped in the world’s filthiest motel room with a detective who had every reason to hate him.

“…Alright, sure.” The words come from him easily, despite how long it took him to make up his mind. “I’ll give you a hand. And in exchange, you make sure I wind up with my own private beach and 10 million yen in my bank account, and the police never start sniffing at my trail again.”

The detective’s face is almost laughably easy to read—his expression goes up, and then down like a roller coaster, a mixture of relief, confusion, and exasperation. “I think you know there’s… no way in hell I can manage something like that.”

Ouma almost snorts at hearing him speak so bluntly. “I was lying, genius. I’ll settle for getting back at whoever did this to me.” Above all else, he was a sore loser. The idea that someone else had somehow managed to get the drop on him—that they’d seen through his plans enough to predict where he’d be—and he hadn’t even noticed them at all still pisses him off beyond words. His pride had definitely taken a worse blow from all this than his body.

“Okay. Okay, that’s…” _Great_ , he was probably about to say, but he must’ve rethought it. Instead, Saihara-chan just clears his throat. “Thanks. We should really get your wound looked at by a professional—er…”

“’Er’, what? Don’t tell me you’re squeamish after you already bandaged me up once to begin with,” Ouma says, rolling his eyes.

“N-No, it’s not that. I just realized this is going to be difficult if I don’t know what to call you.”

Oh, right. Fake identities, pulling the wool over his eyes and all that. He probably didn’t want to call him by a name he’d used when Ouma was only pretending to be his friend.

“Call me Ouma Kokichi—though that’s obviously another lie.” It wasn’t, actually, but there was no way for the detective to know that. Besides, Ouma was too exhausted to think up another good alias on the spot; bleeding out had sort of taken priority.

Saihara-chan looks at him long and hard, then nods slowly. “Ouma-kun… alright. Let’s work together to close this case.”

It’s nothing but a temporary alliance set up on a bunch of lies. Ouma is sure of that much, but when the detective stands up and offers him a hand to help him to his feet, he takes it nonetheless.

After all, a thief and a detective working together unexpectedly… whether it was a trap, a setup, or anything in-between, it still sounded decidedly not-boring.


End file.
